Singapore: Many unhappy with work and social realities

Singapore: A lot of media attention has been focused
on the low wages of Singaporeans recently and how many are
finding it hard to keep up with the cost of living.

A
recent survey by JobStreet.com found that only 31% of
Singaporeans said their salary can cover only their basic
needs and some non-essential luxuries while 42% said it is
only sufficient to meet their basic needs. A shocking 23%
said they were still struggling to make ends meet and from
this last group, 70% earn less than $3000/month. Only 4%
were comfortable with their salaries.

A similar survey by
CIMB revealed “about 43% reckon that the dollar amount
they spend on groceries and utilities has increased by25-50%
while 42% estimate that their bills have gone up by
1-25%.”

The latest figures from the Central Provident
Fund also showed that more than half of active CPF members
who turn 55 have less than the Minimum Sum in their
accounts. The newly retired have insufficient CPF for
retirement and struggle daily for their survival.

It is
even more troubling to learn that many elderly citizens,
people who have worked all their lives to contribute to the
wealth of our country, are still eking out a living working
as cleaners of toilets and hawker centres and doing other
menial tasks. What is worse, is that they are paid very
little wages.

Local economists have also warned that the
widening gap between the haves and have-nots has reached
alarming proportions. Singapore suffers from one of the
world’s highest Gini coefficients, which measures income
inequality. Although the co-efficient have decreased from
0.463 to 0.412 from 2012 to 2013, it still remains amongst
the highest in the world. We urge the government to
institute a minimum wage system for workers across all
sectors so that would allow the bottom twenty percent to
catch up with the rest of the country. We also support the
chairman of the National Wage Council Professor Lim Chong
Yah’s proposal to include a compulsory element in future
NWC recommendations that would raise the wages of the low
and very low-income earners.

But the government continues
to reject calls for a minimum wage and when most of the less
skilled local have inadequate wages to provide decent living
conditions for their families. It is not just the
breadwinner who suffers in such cases, it is also the
children and aged who bear the burden of poverty. These
burdens mark children at a very young age, depriving them of
the resources to help them compete in school and prevent
them from breaking out of the poverty trap.

Such lack of
social mobility in turn exacerbates the problem of income
inequality, as subsequent generations from poorer
backgrounds will find it increasingly harder to break away
from the clutches of poverty. What is even more inexcusable
is the reluctance of the government to even draw a poverty
line so that the problem can be measured and managed.
Denying the problems will not make it go away, it just gives
an impression that they are shirking from responsibility.
Without acknowledging that there is a problem, no national
resources will be channeled to solving it.

It is shocking
that Singaporean workers in the 20th percentile have
experienced no increase in real income from 2001 to 2010.
This is happening in a nation that boasts one of the highest
percentages of millionaires in the world.

More must be
done by the government in the redistribution of the
country’s wealth to ameliorate the widening income gap of
its citizens. Although it tried to reduce personal income
tax from 28% in 2002 to 20% 2007, the Goods and Service Tax
has increased from the initial 3% to 7% today. This form of
taxation is regressive in nature as it affects the poor more
than the rich. Whatever temporary offset the government gave
are not sufficient to overcome the permanent burden of such
a tax on the low wage earners.

Many Singaporean workers
have little bargaining power and do not have the capacity to
deal with unreasonable employers. There are still many who
continue to seek help from the Ministry of Manpower about
their poor working conditions and non-contribution of CPF by
errant employers even today. Irresponsible employers exploit
them through depressed wages, unreasonable work hours,
discrimination and unfair dismissals oppress them.

The
brazenness of the authorities is so stark that they
disregard international standards and insists on going it on
their own. The country has only ratified 5 out of the 8 core
conventions enumerated in the 1998 ILO declaration on
Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. The government
continues to resist ratifying conventions 87, 105 and 111,
depriving workers in Singapore the protection they deserve
and exposing them to exploitations from unscrupulous
employers.

It is a prerequisite for the Employers to
ensure that the "Term of Employment" offered to all workers
is respectful of the Employment Act that must include decent
working standards, fair living wages, and the ILO
Declarations on fundamental principles and rights at work.
The ILO International Core Labour Standards (CLS) are put in
place for the very purpose of protecting all workers must be
incorporated into national laws like the Employment Act of
Singapore.

Without such a comprehensive and coherent
labour framework, local and migrant workers will continue to
be pitted against each other benefiting only the employers
as they languish without adequate social and labour rights
protections.

Lastly, we urge the government to sign the
forthcoming ASEAN instrument on the promotion and protection
of the rights of migrant workers. This would help raise the
level of protection and promotion of migrant worker’s
rights to international standards in 2015.

Singapore
needs to harmonize its labour, environmental laws and human
right’s standards to internationally acceptable legal
standards to practically actualize the sustainable
development agenda of
ASEAN.

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